On the Multiple Clause Linkage Structure of Japanese: A Corpus-based Study

In this paper, we will describe the distribution of the multiple clause linkage structure within actual spoken and written Japanese. We will examine three Japanese corpora: BCCWJ, CSJ and OCOJ. By identifying distributions of multiple clause linkage structures in corpora of contemporary Japanese (BCCWJ and CSJ), we shed light on what kinds of settings give rise to what type of clause linkage structures through what processes. The dynamic rewriting rule proposed by Kondo (2005) is introduced as a model for the incremental production of multiple clause linkage structures. Some common patterns of such structures occurring in Old Japanese are identified by OCOJ and compared to patterns in BCCWJ and CSJ

Elementary School L2 English Teachers’ Language Performance and Children’s Second Language Acquisition

This doctoral dissertation investigates the linguistic performance of German elementary school English teachers and how their second language (L2) English performance relates to their students' acquisition of English as a foreign language. The studies reflect the teachers' L2 language performance, give insights into the interrelationships of the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) dimensions of L2 language production, and finally address how linguistic performance relates to the students' L2 development. Following a mixed-methods approach, the first study analyzed the language performance elicited in semi-structured qualitative interviews with eleven German elementary school English teachers based on CAF measures. The second study focuses on the students' language development of a sub-set of four of the interviewed teachers. The students (N = 132) were given picture pointing tasks of either receptive grammar, receptive vocabulary or both at two times during the fourth year of elementary school. The key finding was that the whole group’s mean grammar score significantly improved from time one to time two. The increase of the mean vocabulary score was not statistically significant. When the students were grouped with their respective teachers, comparisons exposed significant differences between some of the groups. The third study synthesizes the teachers’ CAF performance and the students’ development in receptive English grammar and vocabulary. A principal components analysis (PCA) first calculated the variability of the range of the measures for complexity, accuracy, and fluency and their contributions to each CAF dimension. Correlation analyses between the dimensions revealed several robust significant correlations for complexity, accuracy, and fluency as captured in breakdown fluency and speed fluency. Repair fluency and lexical diversity correlated with breakdown and speed fluency, but not with accuracy and complexity. Based on the teachers’ composite CAF scores calculated in the PCA and the students’ test scores, the relationships between the teachers’ language performances and their students’ L2 development were analyzed. Multiple regression analyses retained breakdown fluency, measured in the number and length of pauses as part of the fluency dimension, as the only dimension significantly predicting the students’ receptive grammar development. The results point to several conclusions: First, the significant correlations between complexity, accuracy, and fluency in terms of breakdown and speed fluency indicate that the dimensions did not come at the expense of one another in the L2 performance on the cross-sectional interview task used in this study. Second, the students’ significant improvement in receptive English grammar implies some positive development of elementary school L2 English as a whole. However, the high variability among the students’ scores indicates other factors being at play in the children’s L2 development in addition to the teachers’ performance investigated in this study. Third, breakdown fluency as a specific feature of the teachers’ spoken language performance may have a beneficial effect on the children’s receptive English grammar acquisition. This finding is in line with observations of pausing as an element of L2 teacher talk as well as a prosodic feature in child-directed speech in first language acquisition that potentially aids language learners in segmenting linguistic input. The findings propose that future research take into consideration specific features in the L2 input and examine them as possible factors in children’s L2 language acquisition. Der Anhang dieser Veröffentlichung steht ebenfalls als elektronische Publikation im Internet kostenfrei (Open Access) zur Verfügung unter: http://dx.doi.org/10.18442/08

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACOUSTIC FEATURES OF SECOND LANGUAGE SPEECH AND LISTENER EVALUATION OF SPEECH QUALITY

Second language (L2) speech is typically less fluent than native speech, and differs from it phonetically. While the speech of some L2 English speakers seems to be easily understood by native listeners despite the presence of a foreign accent, other L2 speech seems to be more demanding, such that listeners must expend considerable effort in order to understand it. One reason for this increased difficulty may simply be the speaker’s pronunciation accuracy or phonetic intelligibility. If a L2 speaker’s pronunciations of English sounds differ sufficiently from the sounds that native listeners expect, these differences may force native listeners to work much harder to understand the divergent speech patterns. However, L2 speakers also tend to differ from native ones in terms of fluency – the degree to which a speaker is able to produce appropriately structured phrases without unnecessary pauses, self-corrections or restarts. Previous studies have shown that measures of fluency are strongly predictive of listeners’ subjective ratings of the acceptability of L2 speech: Less fluent speech is consistently considered less acceptable (Ginther, Dimova, & Yang, 2010). However, since less fluent speakers tend also to have less accurate pronunciations, it is unclear whether or how these factors might interact to influence the amount of effort listeners exert to understand L2 speech, nor is it clear how listening effort might relate to perceived quality or acceptability of speech. In this dissertation, two experiments were designed to investigate these questions

Evaluating pause particles and their functions in natural and synthesized speech in laboratory and lecture settings

Pause-internal phonetic particles (PINTs) comprise a variety of phenomena including: phonetic-acoustic silence, inhalation and exhalation breath noises, filler particles “uh” and “um” in English, tongue clicks, and many others. These particles are omni-present in spontaneous speech, however, they are under-researched in both natural speech and synthetic speech. The present work explores the influence of PINTs in small-context recall experiments, develops a bespoke speech synthesis system that incorporates the PINTs pattern of a single speaker, and evaluates the influence of PINTs on recall for larger material lengths, namely university lectures. The benefit of PINTs on recall has been documented in natural speech in small-context laboratory settings, however, this area of research has been under-explored for synthetic speech. We devised two experiments to evaluate if PINTs have the same recall benefit for synthetic material that is found with natural material. In the first experiment, we evaluated the recollection of consecutive missing digits for a randomized 7-digit number. Results indicated that an inserted silence improved recall accuracy for digits immediately following. In the second experiment, we evaluated sentence recollection. Results indicated that sentences preceded by an inhalation breath noise were better recalled than those with no inhalation. Together, these results reveal that in single-sentence laboratory settings PINTs can improve recall for synthesized speech. The speech synthesis systems used in the small-context recall experiments did not provide much freedom in terms of controlling PINT type or location. Therefore, we endeavoured to develop bespoke speech synthesis systems. Two neural text-to-speech (TTS) systems were created: one that used PINTs annotation labels in the training data, and another that did not include any PINTs labeling in the training material. The first system allowed fine-tuned control for inserting PINTs material into the rendered material. The second system produced PINTs probabilistally. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first TTS systems to render tongue clicks. Equipped with greater control of synthesized PINTs, we returned to evaluating the recall benefit of PINTs. This time we evaluated the influence of PINTs on the recollection of key information in lectures, an ecologically valid task that focused on larger material lengths. Results indicated that key information that followed PINTs material was less likely to be recalled. We were unable to replicate the benefits of PINTs found in the small-context laboratory settings. This body of work showcases that PINTs improve recall for TTS in small-context environments just like previous work had indicated for natural speech. Additionally, we’ve provided a technological contribution via a neural TTS system that exerts finer control over PINT type and placement. Lastly, we’ve shown the importance of using material rendered by speech synthesis systems in perceptual studies.This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) within the project “Pause-internal phonetic particles in speech communication” (project number: 418659027; project IDs: MO 597/10-1 and TR 468/3-1). Associate member of SFB1102 “Information Density and Linguistic Encoding” (project number: 232722074)

The interaction of pitch and timing in the perception of prosodic grouping

Speakers break their otherwise continuous speech stream into meaningful segments, the edges of which are marked by audible cues such as pauses, rate changes and pitch movement. Prosodic boundaries, as these segment edges and the cues marking them are known, play a role critical to language processing and spoken language acquisition. While great progress has been made in quantifying the complicated range of acoustic cues that mark boundaries, little is understood about the cognitive processes by which these cues guide linguistic interpretation. Further, while prosodic boundary measures typically treat critical cues from pitch and timing independently, evidence suggests that pitch and timing are perceptually interdependent. In fact, pitch factors may at times distort perceived duration. This dissertation presents 3 pairs of perception experiments investigating pitch-­time interaction, including putative distortion of perceived duration from dynamic pitch and cross-‑silence pitch jumps (i.e., the kappa effect). Each pair uses the same set of stimuli, resynthesized with crossed continua of pitch and timing manipulations, in two different tasks: one psychoacoustic judgment of duration, and one of linguistic interpretation. Results suggest that perceptual interaction of major cues from timing (preboundary lengthening and pauses) and pitch (edge tones and reset) can be analyzed as reflecting gestalt-­like grouping principles (proximity, similarity and continuity) that have been shown to play a role in perceptual grouping in other cognitive domains, including vision and non-speech auditory perception. In addition to these potentially more cognitive­‐general principles, a new role is introduced for learned and potentially language-­specific patterns to prosodic grouping, in particular intonational schemas, i.e., recognizable cross-­phrase pitch patterns. Beyond this, results also support the hypothesis that perceived grouping is the driving force behind several types of pitch­based auditory illusions, including the auditory kappa effect. This dissertation offers insights into why prosodic boundaries are expressed with the particular pitch and timing cues that are common cross-­linguistically. While much language form is arbitrary, the expression of grouping by way of acoustic cues appears to be much less so. This research has potential toexplain the perceptual foundations of boundary cues, and therefore the cross-­linguistic similarities of prosodic grouping cues

Cross-linguistic filled pause realization: the acoustics of uh and um in native Dutch and non-native English

It has been claimed that filled pauses are transferred from the first (L1) into the second language (L2), suggesting that they are not directly learned by L2 speakers. This would make them usable for cross-linguistic forensic speaker comparisons. However, under the alternative hypothesis that vowels in the L2 are learnable, L2 speakers adapt their pronunciation. This study investigated whether individuals remain consistent in their filled pause realization across languages, by comparing filled pauses (uh, um) in L1 Dutch and L2 English by 58 females. Next to the effect of language, effects of the filled pauses' position in the utterance were considered, as these are expected to affect acoustics and also relate to fluency. Mixed-effects models showed that, whereas duration and fundamental frequency remained similar across languages, vowel realization was language-dependent. Speakers used um relatively more often in English than Dutch, whereas previous research described speakers to be consistent in their um:uh ratio across languages. Results furthermore showed that filled-pause acoustics in the L1 and L2 depend on the position in the utterance. Because filled pause realization is partially adapted to the L2, their use as a feature for cross-linguistic forensic speaker comparisons may be restricted.NWO276-75-010Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

A focus on learners' metacognitive processes: the impact of strategic planning, repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition on L2 oral performance

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteThe present study, carried out under an information-processing perspective, investigated the impact of four metacognitive processes - strategic planning (Foster & Skehan, 1996), repetition (Bygate, 2001b), strategic planning plus repetition (D'Ely & Fortkamp, 2003), and strategic planning for repetition (D'Ely, 2004) - on 47 L2 learners' oral performance of a video-based narrative task. The participants of this study, registered in the Licenciatura, Secretariado, and Extra-curricular courses of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, were divided into 5 groups: (1) the control group (2) the strategic planning group, (3) the repetition group, (4) the strategic planning plus repetition group, and (5) the strategic planning for repetition group. Following Foster and Skehan (1996) and Fortkamp (2000), learners' oral production was examined in four dimensions of speech: fluency, complexity, lexical density, and accuracy. Post-task questionnaires were administered for the purpose of assessing learners' appraisal of task type, their oral performance, and the conditions in which they performed. In general, statistical analyses revealed that repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition exerted a positive and significant impact on some of the dimensions of oral performance such as fluency, lexical density, and accuracy for the repetition group, lexical density for the strategic planning plus repetition group, and accuracy and lexical density for the strategic planning for repetition group. The strategic planning for repetition group also obtained significant gains in complexity. The strategic planning condition, for participants in the strategic planning group, had little impact on participants' oral performance. Overall, these results may be taken as evidence for the trade-off effects among the different dimensions of L2 learners' oral performance. Furthermore, the multifaceted results signal that learners' approach to different experimental conditions is idiosyncratic and that a series of variables interact in different ways when learners perform orally in L2. These variables include the nature of the task, learners' focus of attention during performance, and learners' effectiveness in implementing and retrieving pre-planned ideas. The findings of the present study might contribute to theory building in second language performance as well as to L2 pedagogy

Gesture as a Communication Strategy in Second Language Discourse : A Study of Learners of French and Swedish

Gesture is always mentioned in descriptions of compensatory behaviour in second language discourse, yet it has never been adequately integrated into any theory of Communication Strategies (CSs). This study suggests a method for achieving such an integration. By combining a cognitive theory of speech-associated gestures with a process-oriented framework for CSs, gesture and speech can be seen as reflections of similar underlying processes with different output modes. This approach allows oral and gestural CSs to be classified and analysed within a unified framework. The respective fields are presented in introductory surveys, and a review is provided of studies dealing specifically with compensatory gesture–in aphasia as well as in first and second language acquisition. The experimental part of this work consists of two studies. The production study examines the gestures exploited strategically by Swedish learners of French and French learners of Swedish. The subjects retold a cartoon story in their foreign language to native speakers in conversational narratives. To enable comparisons between learners and proficiency conditions both at individual and group level, subjects performed the task in both their first and their second language. The results show that, contrary to expectations in both fields, strategic gestures do not replace speech, but complement it. Moreover, although strategic gestures are used to solve lexical problems by depicting referential features, most learner gestures instead serve either to maintain visual co-reference at discourse level, or to provide metalinguistic comments on the communicative act itself. These latter functions have hitherto been ignored in CS research. Both similarities and differences can be found between oral and gestural CSs regarding the effect of proficiency, culture, task, and success. The influence of individual communicative style and strategic communicative competence is also discussed. Finally, native listeners’ gestural behaviour is shown to be related to the co-operative effort invested by them to ensure continued interaction, which in turn depends on the proficiency levels of the non-native narrators. The evaluation study investigates native speakers’ assessments of subjects’ gestures, and the effect of gestures on evaluations of proficiency. Native speakers rank all subjects as showing normal or reduced gesture rates and ranges–irrespective of proficiency condition. The influence of gestures on proficiency assessments is modest, but tends to be positive. The results concerning the effectiveness of gestural strategies are inconclusive, however. When exposed to auditory learner data only, listeners believe gestures would improve comprehension, but when learner gestures can be seen, they are not regarded as helpful. This study stresses the need to further examine the effect of strategic behaviour on assessments, and the perception of gestures in interaction. An integrated theory of Communication Strategies has to consider that gestures operate in two ways: as local measures of communicative ‘first-aid’, and as global communication enhancement for speakers and listeners alike. A probabilistic framework is outlined, where variability in performance as well as psycholinguistic and interactional aspects of gesture use are taken into account

Fluency Strategy Training and the L2 Oral Task Performance of Indonesian EFL Classroom Learners

This quasi-experimental study investigated the impacts of two instructional conditions, explicit fluency strategy training and implicit task-based instruction, on university English learners in Indonesia. The results revealed that both instructional conditions could not significantly improve participants’ speech fluency, but improvement on oral proficiency reached statistical significance. A degree of variability in participants’ speech fluency development was also found. Both instructional conditions could be applied with potentially complementary effects in Indonesian EFL classrooms

Allocation of attention in EFL learners' oral performance across multiple task repetitions

Task-based language learning and teaching research from both psycholinguistic and pedagogical perspectives shares a common theoretical background of learners’ attention, awareness, and perception (Levelt, 1989). The former has focused on learners’ prioritized attention to language aspects (e.g., fluency) in their oral performance. Furthermore, researchers have explored learners’ attention during strategic planning through emergent categorization, from retrospective data (e.g., Ortega, 2005). The latter has focused on learners’ uptake, based on incorporation from teachers’ corrective feedback (e.g., Mackey & Philp, 1998). The underpinning concept of incorporation via noticing a gap in Schmidt (1990) displays learners’ awareness of linguistic factors. The present study attempts to fill a gap in previous research by employing incorporation as a more reliable measure, of learners’ attention to linguistic factors, than retrospective data. Allocation of attention in four learners’ oral performance is qualitatively explored over five task repetitions by employing emergent categories of linguistic incorporation. This reveals what learners do during planning in their oral performance and how allocation of their attention changes across five task repetitions. This has long been a puzzle in quantitative analysis of such data. The students’ linguistic incorporation demonstrates their attention to different linguistic factors (e.g., semantic, syntactic), which are linked to a priori categories of fluency and complexity in their oral performance. This allocation of attention eventually changes over task iterations. The trajectories of fluency and complexity are also confirmed by supplemental examinations of data from 15 students. This suggests that individual learners prioritize their attention to a particular area (Foster & Skehan, 2013), and then broaden attention to other areas as more space becomes available for processing through repeated use (Bygate & Samuda, 2005). Besides this cognitive demand, the present study also reveals that learners’ attention may be affected by interlocutor familiarity, social, and cultural factors